The cops say sorry for using an insensitive expression – but who laid the complaint?

Alf has learned another lesson in how to be PC: he must not call people “half-caste”, no matter how appropriate that expression might seem.

The lesson this time comes from the cops, who are saying “oops, sorry” after being chided for calling a missing woman a half-caste.

It seems they issued a statement yesterday saying they held fears for the safety of a 48-year-old woman missing from Auckland’s Te Atatu since Saturday.

So far, so good.

But the police then used what turns out to be an indelicate, insensitive and otherwise objectionable expression.